


The Course Of Law

by MlleMusketeer



Series: The Quality of Mercy [4]
Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Body Horror, Gladiators, Horror, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, M/M, Mutilation, Politics, Prologue, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 02:09:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MlleMusketeer/pseuds/MlleMusketeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-war. A prologue to <i>Do We Not Bleed</i> but not necessarily meant to be read before <i>Do We Not Bleed</i>. </p><p>It is the twilight of the Golden Age. All Kaon cheers the victories and speeches of the gladiator Megatronus, whose spark in turn is deeply swayed by the words of a young Iaconian archivist. But Megatronus has made enemies, one of whom has a plan to break both the revolution and its troublesome leader with one blow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Megatronus wakes in darkness and pain. The very air feels hostile, unfamiliar, and there is someone leaning over him. He shutters optics that refuse to focus, tries to move to defend himself, to rise, and a voice that he knows but cannot place says, “Stay down.”

Unthinking compulsion seizes him, wraps his every limb and he obeys. Horror rises, sudden absolute recognition and denial. It was deactivated. He was freed of it. He was freed of it and this should not be happening, not to him. He is too strong, he swore to himself that he would never be this weak, but the other mech’s voice, the voice that the very spark of him recognizes as _master_ goes on, smug triumph. “Megatronus. Well, well, you certainly have been embarrassing of recent. No one wants to sponsor a revolutionary gladiator. It’s absurd.”

A hand takes him under the chin and forces him to look up at his captor, and now he recognizes him, the elegant preening noble who is his sponsor, whom he most often ignores, since as long as he continues to win, they have nothing to discuss. 

“It’s cost me considerably, this little game of yours,” says his sponsor, smiling. Golden optics refocus, sadistic pleasure lacing the noble’s field. “You will stop. You will contact no more of your revolutionary friends. You will make no more speeches. You will cease agitating completely. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” he hears himself say, grudging word torn from his vocalizer. The sponsor moves forward, field shifting over him, and it is all he can do not to flinch at the bold strength of it, a strength he should be more than able to batter down into submission.

But he cannot. A slave does not challenge his master. 

The hand strokes his chin and he offlines his optics, tries to shield himself in memory. Orion looking up at him in awed delight. The weight of the datapad the little archivist gifted him; no more than a standard hospitality tribute, but given far more meaning in its presentation. 

“Online your optics,” says the sponsor, and he does, looks up into yellow optics glowing white with vicious triumph, and cannot turn away. 

“How rough and unrefined you are.” It’s a purr, and his plating rises away from his protoform, instinctive defensive gesture, one that betrays his anxiety far more than he wishes. “What a _refreshing_ pet you’ll make.”

The code stops the growl in his vocalizer and all he can do is glare. 

A blunt finger is thrust into his mouth, prying it open, and he gags as the rancid taste of perfumed oil fills his olfactory sensors. It makes the sponsor laugh. The finger is removed and he ventilates harshly, circulating oral lubricants in a desperate attempt to clean himself of the clinging stink. 

“Get up,” the sponsor orders softly and he obeys. 

“Bow to me. And thank me.”

Words stall in his vocalizer, and he stares at his captor in confused hatred, on his hands and knees before him.

“Thank me,” said the sponsor. “For taking such care of you—” a hand strokes his helm, possessive, and he shudders under the touch, too like Orion, Orion from whom this would be welcome, “—and saving you from such a foolish path.”

He starts to repeat the words, and earns himself a slap for his pains. 

“Don’t just copy me,” his sponsor says. “Make it sincere.”

He does. He has no other choice. And then he is forced to apologize for putting his sponsor to such trouble, pressing the front of his helm to the noble’s pedes as he does so. 

“You will tell no one of this,” says the sponsor when Megatronus runs out of words and kneels mutely before him, optics blazing rage. Blunt fingers stroke the shapes of his helm. Maybe this would be less terrible if he could offline his optics and imagine it to be Orion, but he cannot. “You will attend me when I require it. You will address me as ‘master’.”

“Yes, master,” he hears himself say.

It is all he can say.

 

——

At long last the sponsor, his master, is finished with him, leaving him to go back to the arena feeling small and ashamed and helpless. Soundwave finds him there in his meager chamber, curled with his back to the wall, staring at nothing. He snarls at the smaller mech for invading his privacy. Soundwave cocks his helm and just looks at him, and Megatronus finds himself huddling smaller involuntarily, and tries to stop himself. 

Soundwave moves forward. 

Megatronus raises a hand. “I am perfectly well,” he growls, and Soundwave stops, and does that helm-cock thing again. 

“I am perfectly well,” he says again, knowing it to be a lie and by the way Soundwave is looking at him it is well apparent to the observer as well. But Soundwave leaves nevertheless and Megatronus welcomes the solitude. He can barely face himself now, let alone Soundwave. 

Soundwave returns far too soon. Megatronus almost snarls at him, but stops when he sees his companion. 

He has not had to visit the surgeon often; he is too good a warrior for that. But Shockwave has regularly attended his speeches, lent quiet support, patched up those revolutionaries who run afoul of the authorities. Soundwave trusts him deeply. Megatronus trusts Soundwave.

Soundwave knows something is wrong. Soundwave has brought the only mech Megatronus knows who might find out the root of the problem and for that, Megatronus would swear eternal friendship to him if he had not already.

He inclines his helm to present his medical port. His orders were only to not speak of his coding; showing it is a different matter entirely. 

Shockwave’s claws are gentle on the back of his neck, even though the actual insertion of the cord is painful; whoever coded him did it with little regard for the state of his mechanisms. There is a long uncomfortable moment.

“Slave coding,” says Shockwave at last, very quietly. Megatronus hates the vulnerability. He would never have consented to this had he not known that Soundwave, too, carried it when they fought side-by-side against the Quintessons, when slave coding was used because treachery might be so devastating. 

They were the heroes of Cybertron then. 

Amusing how far he has fallen.

Soundwave cocks his helm, inquiring. 

“Only the one the code designates as master is able to remove it,” says Shockwave, and disconnects. “We will find a way to override it. Until then, there is little to be done.”

Megatronus resists the urge to rub at the sore medical port. 

“Understood,” he rumbles, and stands. The humiliation, the sense that he is no longer his own, clings, but it becomes bearable knowing that there will be a cure for this, that revenge requires only patience. 

For revenge he shall have.


	2. Chapter 2

In the following days, he finds solace in the fights. When he is in the arena, there is no possibility his master will give him orders, distract him, and so risk the death of his prize pet. There, he may exercise all his rage and his hatred, imagine his master crumpling under his blows rather than his opponents. It is not a purely selfish rage.

He is spared his master’s attentions in the berth only because the mech sees him as far too low to bother dirtying his cable in, and for that he is horribly grateful; the noble’s preferences are as varied as they are foul. Where he procures the mechs to fill his berth is unknown, but whatever the source, they are not willing, specially reformatted to fit his exacting tastes. Their owners are little concerned if they are returned damaged or not at all. Megatronus watches, helpless to act. If ever he needed further encouragement in his revolution, it is this, blinded optics and broken hands and the enforcers made uncaring by bribes. A mech able to afford reformatted bedmates is more than able to pay the attendant bribes.

His lot is better, though it is one of casual, unthinking humiliations. But at least he is allowed to return to his room under the arena to recharge, receive Shockwave’s reassurances that his work on the code is going as planned, that it should not be much longer. At least the sponsor only sees him as a dangerous pet, to be called  on when he wishes to demonstrate his power to his cronies. Show that he has a gladiator of Kaon willing to lick spilt high-grade from the floor for him. 

Megatronus acquires a distaste for any high-grade other than the rough corrosive stuff the gladiators drink; the finer sweet things taste foul now.

But he endures, masking himself behind stolid indifference. If the sponsor wishes to see him as little more than a beast, so be it. He will be proven viciously wrong when Megatronus claws the optics from his face and twists the plating from his protoform, tears the spark from his living frame, leaves him as he’s left his berthtoys. For now, he hides behind lowered optics and deferent posture, and listens to the light pleased voice because it is so easy to imagine it rising in agony.

The little fool is yet to ask him about the other members of his revolution. Doubtless, he thinks it dead without its leader, and Megatronus finds this a blessing. Soundwave and Shockwave would be more than capable of defending themselves; it is Orion he fears for. Orion, whose build is much like that of the bots that the noble prefers. Perhaps he is safe under Alpha Trion’s protection, but Megatronus is unwilling to place such faith in a mech he has never met.

But his tormentor is a fool, and for that Megatronus might praise Primus if he were inclined to believe in such things. For as Megatronus kneels next to his desk he takes note of every mech and femme who enters or leaves, who makes what foul agreement, and remembers them. When he is free, they will die. The Cybertronian people will make them pay for their deeds. 

Time passes, and soon his captor grows bored with him, begins ignoring him, and Megatronus is at first pleased, because it will make killing him that much easier. Shockwave and Soundwave report encouraging progress, and Megatronus redoubles his surveillance of the sponsor’s associates. He notes names, frame types, voices, castes, anything that will be useful in finding and eliminating them, from the head of the precinct’s enforcers to the politicians to the bots who procure the reformatted slaves. 

He has a new match coming soon, one that will actually prove a challenge, and he looks forward to it. He hopes to be free by then, but even if he is not, his defeat of the mech—one whose sole claim to notoriety is the ugly, protracted deaths he inflicts on his opponents—should give his master pause, a hint of his own fate. He looks forward to that, seeing the little sponsor squirm in fear. He has little fear for himself; his opponent is sloppy, used to letting his size and brute strength do all the work for him. He is a fool for believing that he stands a fighting chance before the Champion of Kaon, and it will be a pleasure dismantling such an arrogant idiot.

The gambling houses are already laying ten-to-one odds in Megatronus’s favor. 

Outside of the sponsor’s household, Megatronus is treated with the same enthusiasm as any gladiator before a major match. He hasn’t had to pay for his own drink in any bar for some time—all of Kaon is pleased to see one of their own who will surely triumph over the interloper, the supremely vicious interloper. Megatronus takes what he is given as his due, and tries not to imagine the derision that would be his if they knew his true circumstances, that he daily bows and scrapes to a simpering noble.  That when he rises to leave, it is not his own will that guides him but that of his master. 

Though there are rumors about his presence in his sponsor’s household, they assume it is voluntary, that Megatronus has seduced one of the most powerful mechs on the planet. They do not suspect the truth, because no one imagines a mech as strong as Megatronus could ever be kept against his will. Slave coding is but a story to most of them, even here in the pits of Kaon. 

Too few of its victims are able to speak of it. Yet the doctor who programmed Megatronus does a thriving business, as Soundwave has found. That femme, too, has made Megatronus’s list. There are hundreds of others who have equal claim on her life, but Megatronus is the one most capable to snuff her spark, and so he shall.

It is the night before the match when the sponsor calls him, demanding his presence. He makes his way across the city, the loiterers calling out to him, taunts and praise alike, vicious pleasure and hate curling in his spark. This will be the last night of peaceful recharge his master will get for a long, long time. 

He mounts the steps to the noble’s office two at a time, nodding to the guards on the door, and enters when commanded, settling into a low bow before the desk, a bow that _ought_ to be reserved for a Prime or Lord Protector alone—but who polices the behavior demanded of a slave? 

He raises his helm, confident arrogance curling the corners of his mouth upward, permeating his field. Let the little fool know that he is not the one in control. Megatronus may be bound to his commands, but his spark is his own. 

And the noble does not seem much concerned by this. He smiles back, optics almost white with excitement, and a creeping sense of wrongness overtakes Megatronus, for no mech should return his defiance with such confidence. 

The noble rises from behind his desk and paces around to look down at Megatronus. Even kneeling, Megatronus’s helm is level with his shoulder.

Fingers catch his chin, caressing his jaw, and Megatronus bears it, meets the yellow gaze evenly, allowing his field to be pressed down into submission. His master still smiles, odd and gentle on the patterned faceplate. 

“You have served me well, Megatronus,” he says, and a finger pushes against Megatronus’s mouth. He does as is expected, allows it entrance, allows him to caress the flat planes of his dentae. “Very well indeed. But I find myself with something far more interesting to attend to.”

Megatronus looks up at him, keeping his gaze level, his field calm. The apprehension grows. 

“You will lose the fight tomorrow,” says his master.

If the Pit itself opened beneath his pedes, Megatronus would find it less shocking. He loses control of his field for a fraction of a moment, and the shock/horror/fear makes the noble laugh. He clenches his hands before they can tremble—it is not the hideousness of the death that awaits him that makes them tremble, he tells himself, but the rage that he will suffer it at the hands of such a foolish amateur.

The code allows him to bow his helm and, when his master removes his fingers, say, “Have I displeased you in some way, master?”

“I grow tired of you,” says his master. “You are far from entertaining. At least this way, I may get a little amusement out of your disposal.”

Still greater rage rises in him, but he says nothing. 

“Besides, your successor promises to be far more interesting. You lack creativity in what you do with your opponents. He’s _so_ very innovative.” His master looks down at him, strokes the top of his helm. “Even if you are somewhat more aesthetically pleasing.” He considers Megatronus a long moment, then, carefully wiping his hand on a small metalmesh cloth, steps back around his desk and goes back to work. After some time, long enough for Megatronus’s joints to protest at the position, he says, “You may go. And you will tell no one of this.”

“Yes, master,” he says. “Thank you, master.” It is what the code demands. 


	3. Chapter 3

He returns to his rooms. Soundwave and Shockwave are long in berth, and it is the middle of the night cycle. He does not recharge.

He is not such a fool as to expect that the two of them will cure him before morning. He is not such a fool as to expect his opponent to fall dead that night. He can say nothing. He can do nothing. 

He will die hideously and disgracefully, in humiliation and pain at the hands of an incompetent opponent, a mech hardly worthy to dirty his blade on and all because some pampered noble has grown tired of his new toy. The very revolution that would crush such parasites will be crippled by his death. The information he has endured such varied vicious humiliations for will be useless. All his efforts will be futile.

His optic lands on the datapad next to his berth, the one Orion gave him. 

Orion is one of his revolutionary contacts. He cannot even contact him—not even in a note to be found after his death—to tell him of this. He is to be slaughtered without even that last dignity. 

He drives a fist into the wall and feels it dent under the blow, and finds it only another insult.  He leans his helm against the wall and ex-vents heavily, spark raging in shocked denial. He is Megatronus. The Quintessons fled in fear before him. Insecticons, monsters from the depths of Cybertron, mechs bigger and stronger than him—he has defeated them all. He is Champion of Kaon and he will die in disgrace, end his life with a whimper, helpless to defend himself. 

There is nothing more to be done. He settles on the berth, rereading the datapad. It is a history, one of the foolishly romanticized things that Orion favors, but he finds himself amused by it—heroic deeds and forbidden lovers and a Cybertron that only ever existed in the author’s imagination. 

And in Orion’s hopes of the future. 

He offlines his optics, tries to reconstruct Orion’s warm weight against him. As foolishly romantic as the history he holds, but he cannot but see Orion as a great hope; if even in the corrupt heights of their world there exist mechs with such courage, Cybertron is not lost. There is great personal attachment too, and it brings as much comfort as the political considerations.

It is darkest dawn when Shockwave and Soundwave come for him. He cannot tell them what has happened, but his field is indication enough. 

Shockwave says, “We have something that may work. I have had no opportunity to test it.”

Wordless, Megatronus bends his helm forward to again expose the medical port, and Shockwave approaches him carefully. 

The hope is painful, distracting. Megatronus presses it back until it no longer occupies his whole attention, and concentrates on the fight, on the feel of his frame. He needs little preparation in any case. 

Shockwave steps away again. 

“Thank you,” said Megatronus, and stands, the datapad still in his hands. Now is as good a time as ever to test it. “The name of the mech who ordered the installation of this coding is Pulchellus.” He grins as he speaks the words, proof enough that he is now free. 

Soundwave inclines his helm. If Megatronus still does lose, Pulchellus will not survive the night. It is a deeply satisfying thought, though Megatronus once again has every confidence in winning. 

——

Hours later he steps into light and cheers. His opponent stands in the center of the arena, arrogance and confidence together. His field is foul and pleased. Megatronus moves forward and scans the stands, and yes, there is Pulchellus, the green designs on his faceplate distorting his expression. Megatronus mockingly salutes him, and then his opponent. 

His opponent does likewise and bending forward murmurs, “Don’t worry. I’ll make your death _very_ memorable.”

So Pulchellus has told him. He expects an easy victory over a helpless mech. 

“I shall return the favor,” says Megatronus, and his opponent laughs. 

The announcement of the fight is concluded. The other mech circles him, predatory and confident, and Megatron doesn’t even bother to turn to watch him, sheathing his blade and simply waiting. 

His opponent lunges at him from behind. He feels the shift of a field, steps aside and seizes him by the arm, slamming him into the ground and stepping back, allowing him time to rise again.

He continues this for a time, knowing Pulchellus will think it to be delaying behavior, that he is holding back because he has been ordered to lose, but still trying to delay the inevitable. At last he grows weary of it, and the next attack is met with a knee in the ventral plating and all of his considerable weight thrown against the other mech, knocking him off balance and to the ground. He lands atop him, and his opponent writhes to turn over. Megatronus allows it, meets his opponent’s optics and grins. 

He pins the other mech’s arms under his pedes, and rips apart the chest plates. His opponent screams, gasps, and Megatron plunges his hand through plating and protoform and subdermal armoring and tears, and the screaming rises, doesn’t stop, long constant sound of agony. He seizes the thing he’s looking for, feeling the deceptively small curve of a sparkchamber against the palm of his hand, wrenches and the scream breaks. He pulls free the prize, sparklight winking out as he raises his clenched hand. The frame under him is limp. 

The energon runs down his arm and stains it brightest blue and he stands. “I am Megatron!” he roars over the howl of the crowd, the shortening of his name spoken before he decides, but it _is_ appropriate; he has all but died today, and no one will ever address him as Pulchellus did, never again. He stands, with the energon-drenched sparkchamber in one hand, and the unmarked blade of his sword extended over the other. “I am the Slagmaker!” He scans the crowd and wide yellow optics meet his, Pulchellus scrambling upright to flee. “I call no mech master!” 

——

It is war. 

It has been war for a long, long time. 

His revolution started the day he won free of Pulchellus, but the war did not begin until Orion betrayed him on the floor of the Council, until the Council warped his beloved into a thing of war. When they meet in battle, he sometimes sees flashes of the mech he knew, but only flashes. He had thought Orion a sign of hope; it appears that he was anything but. 

He has left standing orders with all the Decepticon army, but especially the Decepticon Justice Division. There are two mechs with whom he will deal personally: the one formerly known as Orion Pax, and Pulchellus. 

It is the latter that Tarn brings to him. The noble’s paint is destroyed beyond recognition, save for the delicate patterns across his faceplate. He bears no faction symbols, and is spattered in energon—he had hired bodyguards, Tarn informs him, very substandard bodyguards. 

Megatron looks down at the cringing thing in front of him and kneels before him, taking cuffed hands delicately in his own. Pulchellus’s optics light with hope, his pleas turn more confident, and Megatron looks at him with every indication of attention.  

“What mercy,” he says softly, “did you offer your berthtoys?”

Pulchellus’s field blanches in horror and he tries to recoil, but Megatron has a hold on his hands and pulls the noble in close. 

“This is indeed a personal revenge,” he says, and crushes the delicate hands in his own. 

He waits for the noble to cease screaming, so he can be heard. “But not only that,” he says. “It is a revenge on the behalf of Cybertron.” 

He then takes Pulchellus’s optics and vocalizer and audials, leaving him as silent and helpless as his victims once were. He takes the cable from its housing, wrenches plating from protoform and only then does he step back and end the crawling thing before him with a cannon blast through the sparkchamber. 

It was still faster than he deserved. But Megatron has little sentiment to spare for the past, for something so small and mean. The greatest traitor, his greatest enemy, has already fled to the stars. 

Optimus Prime is all that matters now. 


End file.
